Traditional ‘Europeans’ are worried. It’s not only fear of strangers: it’s the  redefinition of ‘our’ space and  uncertainty about ‘our’ future. Future developments, largely unexpected, let us stress that once again, will force us to redefine choices and policies that previously had been (differently in different countries) seen as ‘ours’ by definition. But now it seems that ‘immigration policies’ will have to be designed and ‘immigrants’ dealt with in a very different context. 

Attention at present is primarily  focused on France and Italy and the policy responses and  ‘messages sent out’ by governments under the pressure of people flow, prompted by the violent confrontations with dramatic  human costs in North Africa and the Middle East. What we are facing now is a process of change that ought to bring us, traditional ‘Europeans’, to reconsider how the Mediterranean space is defined, and how we are related to and confront political contexts and peoples that we had seen as far apart, different, actually as others. 

How these events (ongoing conflict in Libya in particular) have been handled by the Italian Government is a widely discussed theme in our political sphere, public  discourse and in the media. It all began with growing numbers from the other side of the sea reaching the island of Lampedusa. Within a very few days, the anticipation of further arrivals, difficulties in facing that, graphic images in the media had come to be regarded as a highly visibile challenge. A core concern for those in power was how to handle this in terms of domestic politics (elections were close, the Lega Nord was extremely vocal in its opposition to all forms of asylum). The EU was regarded as a major source of support, and the Italian Government had recourse to the EU at the very beginning. It immediately announced that money would be made available. 

However, lack of adequate planning at the European level triggered a round of international debate.  Back in Italy, the main problem was how to tackle the immediate challenge while anticipating further developments. Various arrangements were put in place, trying to face the immediate needs of those, in extremely distressed circumstances, who continued to arrive. 

But accommodating these people raised a further issue - of increasing numbers of newcomers, not only from the Mediterranean area, but from other African regions. Immigrants from all over the world had reached Egypt in particular. A much more profound process of global mobility was thus for once made visible. This was immediately seen as having a ‘European relevance’,  and dangerous implications. 

Of course there were voices in some sectors of public opinion and in some political groupings, who made it clear that giving support to these people in their political struggle and solidarity in their present (and future) difficulties were crucial choices, reflecting fundamental values. 

But political leaders  and the media insisted that there were far too many of them and that they had to be sent back to their countries, or moved out of Italy (most of them towards France: Tunisians in particular were making it clear that this was their preferred destination). So the obvious next step involved granting  ‘temporary acceptance’ documents which would allow all to move freely within the Schengen area. Hence, out of Italy: this was the goal. 

The French Government immediately opposed this solution. 

Increasing numbers of ‘immigrants’ have tried to reach the Italian/French border nevertheless. The first reaction was to refuse all those travelling from Italy entry into France. International television channels showed how many people had to pass through days (and nights) without being given any adequate  assistance or any information. In the days that followed, controls were established at the border by French authorities. Those who did not have what was considered a sufficient amount of money were not allowed to move on into France. 

At the end of April, Sarkozy and Berlusconi met in Rome: their agreements and ‘solutions’ were announced. 

It is very clear that both feel the pressure from their ‘populist’ right-wing political rivals, Marine Le Pen in Front National  in France and the Lega Nord in Italy, together with large sectors of public opinion in both countries. But beyond that. Economic and social problems are to be expected in the  coming months (and years). Resistance to processes of change is to be expected. The sharpening of conflicting interests, and of course, forms of discrimination and growing xenophobia are one response. 

A scenario-in progress is what we have to face that had somehow not been anticipated in a ‘traditional’ European perspective, despite Europe’s intimate knowledge of how this dynamic can develop. 

So, we must work at redefining our near-term and longer-term future. 

Hopefully, also, we might finally learn how to live in diversity, while taking into account ongoing social and political pressures (and considering how unprepared Europe appears to be to face them). Two aspects in particular demand our urgent fresh attention, the rising populism in many EU countries, and the relevance for Europe of  present events  in North Africa and the Middle East. 

Just a brief comment looking at the past. In the post-war period, the project of adequate migration policies and institutions was seen as an important and feasible social and political objective in the Nordic countries, and in different ways and with different procedures in France, the UK, and Germany as well. ‘Newcomers’ were needed. Conditions of discrimination and inequality were present, but a variety of approaches and models to deal with this were developed in contexts which all had in common assumptions that a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, mutli-religious future settlement could be reached. 

Putting it briefly: those circumstances made living in diversity a possible European framework, a common goal which would, of course, require a shared project and continuous engagement. But suddenly, we find ourselves in very different circumstances. Now we face, all over Europe, growing ‘institutional xenophobia’ and a pervasive ‘politics of fear’. 

In many EU countries populist parties and a supportive public opinion have become a central political and social dimension (with somewhat different aspects and perspectives as to their future roles and positions). But common traits, which have been analyzed in a number of studies, are there for all to see: not only growing problems in the economy and in the labour market in particular; but increasing disaffection with the institutional machinery, national as well as European; and then there is the role of the media in stoking this fear. In all these different cases, the question of migration, and all the policies related to living in diversity have taken centre-ground, not lessening the fear and its attendant xenophobia, but adding to its thralldom.  

A highly visible new generation of political leaders, markedly different as to their backgrounds and their policy proposals, as well as their highly personal ways of presenting themselves (in Italy, Berlusconi and Bossi must both be seen as interesting examples) have built strong support from large sectors of the population who have felt that they have no voice.  

What is the alternative to their fear and xenophobia? Does ‘traditional’ Europe have an answer? 

I would like to wish you well next week for Europe Day and your investigation of the ‘Uses of Xenophobia’, and also congratulation on the tenth birthday of openDemocracy. This is indeed a timely discussion.

Well, after having to cancel 2 prior ED's due to assorted family occurrences, we're finally getting ready for our June 24th ED of my 2012 135i convertibl. We = me, wife, and 2 teen daughters, 15 and 12. My wife and I have been to other parts of Germany before, but Munich, Bavaria, Austria, and...

May 7th On this day in 1824, Beethoven's 9th Symphony premiered in Vienna.   In 1847, the American Medical Association was organized in Philadelphia, Pa.   In 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine in World War I off the coast of Ireland.   In 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the allies in Rheims, France.   In 1954, the 56-day-long battle of Dienbienphu ended with Ho Chi Minh's forces defeating the French, signaling the end of French power in Indochina.   In 1992, the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting mid-term Congressional pay raises, was ratified. In 1994, Norway's most famous painting, "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, was recovered almost three months after it was stolen from a museum in Oslo. The fragile painting was recovered undamaged at a hotel in Asgardstrand, about 40 miles south of Oslo, police said.   In 1999, during action against Yugoslavia, NATO jets mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and injuring 20.   And in 2000, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as Russia’s president.

The world's largest miniature airport has gone on display at Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany .

When the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, Bremen's police force did not hesitate to side with them. Their decision to collaborate turned civil servants into mass murderers.

Source: [b]Associated Press[/b]

CLEVELAND — U.S. prosecutors asked a judge Friday to reject a federal public defender’s request to represent a retired Ohio autoworker who is on trial in Germany for alleged Nazi war crimes.

John Demjanjuk, 90, already has a U.S. attorney willing to work for free,...

May 7, 1945 Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II.

AsiaOne

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Vodafone Germany has begun selling the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v Android tablet on their network. The device is currently being offered for 659.90 Euro (about $945). To refresh your memory, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v offers a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 TFT display, a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor, a 16GB of internal storage, [...]

Bayreuth University said Friday that the former German defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, “deliberately” plagiarized parts of his doctoral thesis.

(20 votes - 2 comments - 276 views)
Work in progress of the airport at the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany.

Older footage, but during the night cycle:
Knuffingen Airport at night

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HTC ChaCha is one of the two Facebook phones that the Taiwanese company announced back in February at MWC 2011. While HTC didn’t officially unveil the handset’s price, Amazon Germany just did. The retailer says the ChaCha will cost €319 (about $462). Sadly, it doesn’t say when exactly it will launch the device – although [...]

Frankfurt, Germany, May 06, 2011 –(PR.com)– Gerstein Global Futures is known for its alternative investment plans; specifically in managing multi-advisor funds that combine the return flows of numerous skilled and all professional Commodity Trading Advisors to create comparatively superior risk adjusted returns plausible low volatility. The soon to be released Strategic Multi-Advisor Managed Futures Funds [...]

Derek Lowe, an Arkansan by birth, got his BA from Hendrix College and his PhD in organic chemistry from Duke before spending time in Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship on his post-doc. He's worked for several major pharmaceutical companies since 1989 on drug discovery projects against schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, diabetes, osteoporosis and other ...

I'll be joining these fifteen bartenders in Cognac, France this June for the finals of the 2011 G'Vine Gin Connoisseur Program. Over 300 bartenders from 32 countries (!) competed for this, so a big congratulations to the finalists. They are: Jill Saunders (Beaufort Bar at the Savoy Hotel, London, UK) Terry Cashman (The Hoxton Pony, London, UK) Torsten Spuhn (Modern Masters, Erfurt, Germany) Rene Soffner (Roomers Bar, Frankfurt, Germany) David Gonzalez (Shikku Izakaya, Madrid, Spain) Gegham Ghazaryan (Xandom, Alicante, Spain)...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

This could be scary for me as I might end up in too many wrecks with my thoughts :)  By now we have all heard about the Google car that was originally developed by Stanford and continues to rage on.  Their car as I understand is programmed and the new car being researched and developed in Germany takes this up to the next level with using our brains and you know a “combo” car that does both would be nice!  When the brain gets tired, as what happens with mine, just program it to take you home.  Guess what, it’s another Volkswagen too. 

TED Long Beach-Attendees Get to Take a Ride in the Google Autonomous Car

The link above will show some real people getting a ride this year at the TED convention in Long Beach, CA.  The entire idea though of the brain drive is to perhaps help the handicapped.  BD 

http://in.reuters.com/news/video/story?videoId=204935626&videoChannel=6

 

RenRen, a Chinese social network, just had a very successful IPO that raised $743 million for the company on shares priced at $14 (the high end of what many analysts anticipated). Currently, the stock is trading at $16.76 per share, giving the company a valuation of $6.5 billion on revenue of $67.5 million in 2010 - up 64% from 2009 revenues.

There's certainly value in the network, but we have to go against the many media outlets who've promoted RenRen as "the Chinese Facebook." It's not.

Fortune notes some of RenRen's similarities to Facebook: a social network that started by targeting college students before expanding to everyone, members using their real identities to connect with people they know, a platform for app developers, popular social games, a Connect system with partner websites. There are definitely a lot of similarities, but it's the differences that account for why RenRen =/= Facebook.

1. Facebook is a big deal outside of the US, RenRen is only big in China

And according to their mission statement

"we aim to define social networking experience and to revolutionize the way that people in China connect, communicate, entertain and shop"

(emphasis, ours) they have no ambitions to change that. China is obviously a good market to be number one in, but so is the US. If Facebook had only focused on growth in the US, they wouldn't be anywhere near where they are today. Facebook is Facebook because they're the number one social network in the UK, in France, in Germany, in Canada and many more countries. Sure, there are plenty of countries where Facebook isn't the top social network - notably Brazil, South Korea and Japan.

But as lucrative as the Chinese market is - and it's certainly lucrative, being number one in one country just doesn't equal being number one in 20 (sizable) countries.

2. When it comes to active users, there's not a clear leader in China

RenRen claims 117 million registered users, but of that only 31 million are active. Percentage wise, that's slightly more than 1/4th of registered users. No social network is immune to abandoned accounts, but worldwide Facebook claims more than 500 million active users, with 50% logging in daily. At an advertising event in February of this year, Facebook's head of US Agency Relations broke out some country specific numbers. In the US (Facebook's home country), there are 149 million active American users, 70% of whom log on daily. {TechCrunch}

Since Facebook doesn't release registered user numbers (at over 500 million active users, it's kind of  unnecessary) there's no definitive figure to compare that with, but Google's ad planning tool estimates put the number of absolute unique US users to Facebook in March 2011 at 190 million. If we assume all of those users have a Facebook account, that would mean almost 80% of Facebook's US users are active, and 55% of their total registered user base - not just those who are active - visit the site every day.

RenRen's active user numbers aren't close. Add to that, even though analysts say competitors like 51.com are declining, they still maintain an equal or higher number of active Chinese internet users. {SAI/BusinessInsider} So RenRen isn't exactly losing the fight when it comes to Chinese social networks, but there's a way to go before they're declared the winner.

3. Facebook is an internet presence outside Facebook

For a while, some people saw Facebook as the new AOL: a walled garden service that would eventually crash as people began to decentralize and move to sites on the open web. Then Facebook released widgets that allowed for the easy addition of Facebook social features to almost any site on the open web. Almost overnight, it made Facebook a force beyond Facebook.

The 'Like' button is officially a year old as of April 21st, and 10,000 sites are using it. RenRen Connect, which launched in October 2009, has 600 partner sites.

It's not an apples to apples comparison, but probably one of the clearer examples of why our first two points matter.

4. User growth is beginning to plateau

RenRen is still growing, but percentage wise, user and revenue growth is slowing. {BusinessInsider} Facebook's overall percentage growth may not be as rapid as it was in the past few years, but that's because it's pretty hard to keep up 100% year over year growth in every market when you have 500 million active users.

5. There is no RenRen ecosystem

Part of the reason Facebook has been able to raise so much money at eye-popping valuations is the fact that it's an ecosystem that has the power to not only create revenue for itself, but cottage industries as well. Sure, Facebook owes some of its popularity to companies like Zynga, who create games and apps that keep people on the site; but Zynga also owes a good part of its multi-million dollar value to Facebook. Then there are companies like NorthSocial and BuddyMedia, who provide brands and companies with tools that help them manage their presence on the site.

Even Twitter, who still hasn't completely figured out how to capitalize on the value it's creating, has managed to create an ecosystem that other companies can be built on.

While Chinese game developers have had hits, RenRen just isn't in a position yet to create industries specifically around RenRen.

---

While it's highly unlikely that RenRen will ever equal the success of Facebook, it doesn't have to to be successful. As of April 2010, ComScore estimates that 38% of Chinese internet users visit social networking sites, compared to 81% of US internet users. That means there's still plenty of room for growth in users and revenue to satisfy investors. Add to that the fact that it's notoriously difficult for Western consumer tech companies to succeed in China without partnerships, and RenRen certainly has a chance at becoming a significant Chinese internet company. Just don't compare it to Facebook.

5 Reasons Why RenRen Will Never Be a Facebook Equivalent by YM Ousley originally appeared onSignature9

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

“Intermittent sun exposure and sunburn are strong predictors of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM). On the other hand, melanomas may arise also in non-sun-exposed areas such as the vulva. However, little is known about a possible relationship between sun exposure and vulvar melanoma. Temporal and latitudinal dependencies of the incidence rates of vulvar melanoma were studied in comparison with those of CMM among Caucasians in Sweden, East Germany, USA and Victoria (Australia). The ratios of vulvar melanoma incidence rates to those of CMM tend to decrease with increasing CMM rates. The incidence rates of CMM have increased with time until recently, while those of vulvar melanoma have either decreased or remain constant. In USA vulvar melanoma incidence rates seem to increase from south to north, while for CMM incidence rates on sun exposed skin areas decrease from south to north. Comparison of latitudinal trends of the incidence rates of vulvar melanomas and CMM show opposite trends. Whenever CMM rates increase, either with time or with decreasing latitude (indicating increased sun exposure) the ratio of vulvar melanoma rates to CMM rates on exposed skin, seem to decrease. Thus, latitudinal trends seem to ...

Among the fears communication service provider executives sometimes have is that customers will not pay for better service or new features. A new survey of 2,500 mobile subscribers by Amdocs, including mobile consumers in five European nations suggests subscribers are willing to pay for an improved customer experience and new services.

Fully 90 percent of Russian subscribers indicated they are willing to pay higher premiums to receive the products and services they want.

Only 30 percent of subscribers from all of the surveyed countries said they would be unwilling to pay for additional services.

Connectivity and the ability to make mobile payments were cited by European consumers as the top reasons they would increase their mobile usage. Subscribers also expressed a willingness to pay a
premium for the ability to consume all services from any device and for a single data bundle option.

Forty-three percent of respondents from all five European countries viewed connectivity as the most important industry development of the next decade.

Fifty-two percent of surveyed Russians and more than half of the Germans felt connectivity and synchronization between all devices would be the most important development of the next 10 years, and
almost 50 percent of German end users felt that the connected world would encourage them to increase their mobile usage.

In the U.K., more than 70 percent of respondents cited connection to other devices as the first or second most influential factor in increasing their mobile consumption.

European respondents chose improved network quality as the service they would be most likely to pay a premium for and 46 percent said this is the aspect they would most like to change or improve about their current mobile reality.

Users in the United Kingdom are most likely to pay a premium for increased network quality (39 percent) and 50 percent of surveyed consumers in the United Kingdom cited network improvements as their top concern, reflecting a growing reliance on access to mobile communication and information wherever they are.

The survey also included subscribers in France, Germany and Sweden.

As with all such surveys, there often is a difference between what consumers ay they will do, and the ways they actually behave.

Still, as with any product, the notion that customers will not buy new features, products or applications can be wrong. Whether they will, or will not, depends on the value of the innovations and the cost of using those new innovations.

Nobody seems to think "paying" is an issue with iPhones, iPads or virtual goods used in online games. What service providers must do is what all suppliers must do: create more compelling products.

read more here

A tale of grief and loss is strangely comforting

A few years ago, Siobhan Dowd and I were both shortlisted for a book award in Germany. Shortly before the ceremony, she died. At the venue I told my minder that Siobhan's agent had come ready with a speech in case she won. "Oh, but of course she can't win," said the minder. "The prize is for living authors. Now she is dead, so she is disqualified." "Oh but . . . she's only just dead. I mean, she was definitely alive when she wrote the book." "But now she's dead. So you have an extra chance to win."

When does a writer really die? Since Dowd's death, her publisher has brought out her Carnegie-winning novel, Solace of the Open Road. And now Patrick Ness and illustrator Jim Kay have created a new book from a set of notes that she left behind. In a moving introduction, Ness says it was like being handed a baton and told to run. Well, he ran fast and he ran with grace. A Monster Calls is the story of Conor, who is repeatedly visited by a monster while his mother is dying.

The monster is a brilliant creation – part giant, part yew tree, destructive, didactic, elemental. It tells Conor three stories, which work, like New Testament parables, by wrongfooting you. The good guys turn out to be bad and the bad guys good. Elegantly, the same goes for the overarching story, in which the nightmare monster is less frightening than daylight family. The prospect of Conor's mother's death brings not only grief and the primal fear of death itself but a list of no less terrifying pragmatic anxieties: who is going to look after me? Who can I count on? Where will I live?

The book has the thrills and ambition you would expect from the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy. It's also easy to trace Dowd's influence. There's a very Irish emphasis, for instance, on the importance of making a "good death" – with your loved ones around you and the right things said. But perhaps the most impressive thing about it is that it's nothing like Ness's other books and nothing like Dowd's. Like the monster, it has a life of its own.

It's also an extraordinarily beautiful book. Kay's menacing, energetic illustrations and the way they interact with the text, together with the lavish production values, make it a joy just to hold in your hand. If I have one quibble, it is with a line in the introduction where Ness says the point of a story is to "make trouble". It seems to me he has done the opposite here. He's produced something deeply comforting and glowing with – to use a Siobhan Dowd word – solace. The point of art and love is to try to shortchange that grim tax collector, death. Ness, Dowd, Kay and Walker have rifled death's pockets and pulled out a treasure. Death, it seems, is no disqualification.

Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic is published by Macmillan.

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Media outlets in Germany were virtually unanimous that Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg got his just desserts for plagiarizing his dissertation. They were divided, however, over the political future of the beleaguered baron.

Let's face it, putting this week's events in historical perspective is a bit of a fool's errand. I'll leave it to you to figure out why they turned to me to help on that mission, one that has a dramatically lower likelihood of success than, say, flying under cover of darkness deep into the heart of the world's fourth most populous nation, dispatching the world's most elusive fugitive, and getting out ahead of a hornet's nest of scrambling fighter jets.

Frankly, I'm still not even entirely sure I'm capable of putting the major events of the last century in perspective, much less those of last weekend. After all, Germany lost two world wars and today we are told it is Europe's indispensable nation, more influential than ever. And most folks think we lost in Vietnam, but three and half decades later the Soviet Union is gone, communism is discredited, and Vietnam is both a vibrant economy and open to business with the United States -- so whose vision of victory was realized?

Nonetheless, let's try to put this week in perspective by highlighting a few winners, a few losers, and then a few stories that were overshadowed by this week's headlines that may actually turn out to be more important.

The winners who have thus far emerged from the shootout at the Abbottabad corral include, in reverse order of the size of the win:

10. Sohaib Athar: The mild-mannered 33-year-old programmer who tweeted the news of the attack has enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and managed it with a wry sense of humor.

9. Anwar al-Awlaki: The New Mexico-born Merchant of Venom is among the front-runners to pick up the bin Laden mantel as the world's most wanted terrorist along with Ayman Al-Zawahiri and a handful of others. The bad news for them, they just moved up on the U.S. counter-terrorism target list ... which may be the most dangerous place in the world to find yourself.

8. India: The most Paki-skeptic of all places on earth is quietly ... and not so quietly ... reveling in all aspects of the raid: the damage to their historic enemy's credibility, the apparent porousness of their likely adversary's borders, and the general blow to Pakistan's stature in the world.

7. War Dogs: Whether it was a German Shepherd or a Belgian Malginois who went along with the Navy SEAL team on the raid, the pooch is definitely not only the world's top dog for a week, he or she has done a great service to combat canines everywhere. If you doubt it, see FP's own Becky Frankel's great photo essay on the subject

6. Leon Panetta: The super-public servant greased the skids for his smooth ascendancy to the top job in the Pentagon by not only being the man overseeing the successful bin Laden mission but for reportedly being alone among cabinet members suggesting the president go for the plan he ultimately followed. He could have been the sacrificial lamb; instead he made himself a slam dunk (sorry, George Tenet) for bigger and better things.

5. The Shooter: We don't know his name in keeping with the secrecy and the low-key code of the SEALs. But this is a guy who is one leak away from a book deal, a movie, the key to every city in America and to never having to buy himself a beer ever again. Oh, and there's also that eternal gratitude of a nation thing on top of it all. 

4. SEAL Team Six: The elite of elites has placed themselves permanently in the history books with a feat that ranks up there with the raid on Entebbe and well beyond virtually all movie fiction. They have not only done credit to their brethren in the U.S. special forces community but may have done more than any senior officers to change the way the war on terror is fought going forward.

3. The Families of U.S. Service Men and Women in Afghanistan: They're coming home sooner now. This was their mission too. You can hardly beat that ... and because there are so many of you, that's why you edge out those folks at the pointy end of the spear who completed the mission.

2. Barack Obama: His finest hour. Decisive. Cool. Able to both strike hard and do so with the kind of American values and restraint that elevated the mission and stands in stark contrast to the bombast and recklessness of some of his predecessors.

1. The Planet Earth: A day without bin Laden is a better day for everyone.

Losers

It is hard to imagine losers from an almost universal victory like the death of a mass murderer, but there were a few. They include:

5. Fringe Critics of the President: One big argument against Obama has fallen by the wayside. In fact, if you want another big winner, one possibility might be the American people. There is a chance that by marginalizing the nutcases and Tea Partiers further, this win for Obama will leave only the serious candidates like Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Mitch Daniels in the Republican field. Who knows, we might even have a thoughtful, respectful, substantive debate in the 2012 elections. I know it's difficult to imagine, but take a moment. Imagine.

4. Osama bin Laden: He's dead. Otherwise he would be higher up the list. But dead men know no shame -- especially those who apparently knew none in life, either.

3. Hamid Karzai: Say goodbye to all the nice men with fat checkbooks in all the desert camo outfits. U.S. officials may say what they might, but their departure from your country was accelerated substantially this week. Think that's good news, Hamid? Patience, friend.

2. Pakistan: It's hard to pick out who are the bigger losers -- the military and intelligence low-level types who will be rounded up and punished for helping OBL, the higher level types who will be punished for letting the Americans in and out with nary a scratch or an alarm, the even higher level types who are likely to see the flows of cash they are skimming from American aid cut off, or the highest level types who have seen their credibility shattered and their hold on power put in jeopardy. Unfortunately, also threatened are the good people of Pakistan who don't deserve more chaos or weaker leaders, many of whom were actually helping fight the war on terror and will now be compromised by their countrymen who were abetting enemies of civilization.

1. Mullah Omar, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Anwar Al-Awlaki: See above. You guys all moved up the list. Time to get your affairs in order, write good-bye notes, that kind of thing.

Finally, while this story dominated the news this week, to put it in perspective, consider that as we raided Abbottabad, at other locations in Pakistan, scientists and technicians were continuing to build up Pakistan's nuclear arsenal even as the country's political and military leaders saw their grip on power grow more tenuous.

While OBL was being gunned down, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda cells everywhere were planning new attacks.

While the story buzzed, the story that would otherwise have been the top story of the week -- the deal between Hamas and Fatah brokered by the Egyptians -- assured that after the Arab Spring may come an even more unsettling and dramatic Arab Autumn.

While bin Laden was the topic on everyone's mind, unemployment went up, housing in the United States continued its double dip, Europe teetered, and inflation remained a serious issue in China, Brazil, and elsewhere.

In other words, to put this week's momentous events in perspective, it's worth noting that as is always the case, the next stunning headline was being written somewhere else, beyond our attention, possibly even beyond our imagining.

As the hit musical Dirty Dancing prepares to go on tour, our reporter joins young hopefuls at open auditions, and asks how a low-budget film became 'a cultural event that lasted decades'

You could probably argue that Flashdance is the better film, but it is Dirty Dancing that captured our collective heart. They call it "Star Wars for girls". It's not much on paper: a family goes on holiday, and its late-teenage daughters fall in love, one with a good'un – Patrick Swayze on career-defining form – and one with a bad sort. Steamy dancing occurs, that's the main thing. When the stage version opened in 2006, it had the highest pre-sell in West End history. Now, they're holding open auditions in the regions, for the national tour.

At 7.15 on Thursday morning, there is a snake of girls standing outside a dance studio in Edinburgh, standing in first position from muscle memory, wearing so much makeup that they look like those street performers in the festival who think it's entertaining to pretend to be a statue. I always thought the point of open auditions was just to drum up publicity for the show, but the Dirty Dancing tour has no need of publicity. It's already taken £8.5m in sales, when booking's only been open three weeks, and the show doesn't start until September. It sounds like a lot of money.

Guy Chapman is the most modest marketing man I've ever met, not just in theatre, but in any field. "Well, I come from opera. Everything sounds like a lot of money." Really, though, how does it compare to other musicals? "It is in a different league. Twenty-five per cent of people buying a ticket have never booked with that theatre before – so it's not people who go to Mamma Mia! or Sound of Music. It's the Take That/Kylie crossover, it's basically the pop audience. The theatre crowd are a bit more savvy, and they know they don't have to book straight away. The pop crowd will book the first day booking opens."

The Take That reference hits this demographic squarely on its head: women born between 1970 and 1980 are obsessed with this film. I have a theory about this. I stole it off a friend who is into Freudian psychoanalysis: the whole theme, the eponymous dirty dancing, is sublimated sexual energy, that much is obvious. That memorable moment when Swayze finally manages to heave, sorry, lift Jennifer Grey off the ground (to recap, they've tried the lift before, for a competition, and not pulled it off … after much ill-fortune, his holiday camp-dancing career seems to be over, and she's been relegated back to childhood … ) is a metaphor for losing your virginity. And it's clearly a female-crafted metaphor, proceeding not with a clear narrative urgency, as straight as a die to the irreducible explosion, but rather, with mis-starts and damp squibs and dance routines that don't go right because both people weren't doing the right thing at the right time and didn't have the right feelings for each other.

But that's just background: the edge comes from the fact that the metaphor is more embarrassing than the simple sexual awakening it's trying to sublimate. The audience is bound together by the shame of having enjoyed something so heavy-handed, and the more bonded you are, the more you enjoy it; the more embarrassed you are about enjoying it, the more bonded you are, until it has become more than a film, it's a cultural event that has lasted decades. There is one moment like this every generation: the swing scene in Sons and Lovers, and almost any scene with a horse in it in International Velvet. Sex substitution is a much darker art than actually writing a sex scene.

Having said all that, I am still surprised to see such a lot of girls queuing up to audition. When this film was released in 1987, almost none of these people were born. If we take as given that they wouldn't have been allowed to watch it before they were 10 (it has "adult themes"; even now the producers aren't encouraging schools to book), the film would have been 15 years old by the time a lot of them saw it. Was it really still iconic by the turn of the century?

"It was absolutely iconic," Adiza Shardow tells me. "I grew up watching this film". Alice Wilkins and Amy Harrison both say the lift is iconic. Their friend Leeanne Dobbie says the watermelon scene is iconic. They all say the watermelon scene is iconic, apart from the one who thinks it's a pineapple, while 21-year-old Adelle Burn distilled something else about Dirty Dancing, a subdivision within the sexuality umbrella: "It's on a par with Chicago, but that's raunchy sexy. This is more feel-good sexy". Elizabeth Pick, also 21, refines it further: "It's not your average dance routine, where everything's spot-on and perfect. It's quite grimy."

"Grimy, like, dirty?"

"No, grimy, like messy."

She is here with Kayleigh LeMay, Rebecca Clarke and Gemma Cutler, all 21, all from the Liverpool Theatre School and College. They all, variously, say they fancied Swayze, which is quite moving, given his premature death in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. It dawns on me that they're all convinced I have some kind of sway with the production, even though I keep telling them I don't. They think this is some kind of pre-audition, where someone tests your passion for the work before you're allowed to dance it, like in Miss World when they test your personality. But let's assume that they're telling the truth.

Apparently, at the Cardiff auditions a bloke turned up in a suit and danced in his socks, but most people here seem semi-professional, or at the least, ex-stage school. It's quite Darwinian, and incredibly hard. Two minutes in, the good ones are already at the front because the crap ones already don't know which way they're facing. I thought it would be like picking a horse in the Grand National, the differences would be minor, a couple of unlucky ones would fall over, and sooner or later, someone would end up winning. It's a bit more human than that. Dancing suggestively, besides being technically difficult, is challenging in some other, elemental way. That's why "dance like there's no one watching" is a well-known phrase. That's why you have to be drunk.

But this film hasn't just lasted because of the dancing. It was political for its time – and set against our neutered, advert-whipped Hollywood, it looks almost radical. Chapman says: "It's not like in Verdi, where the political reference is there, but no one ever thinks about it. This is explicit, if you listen." Since the abortion is what everybody talks about, that is not a bad place to start. Unwanted pregnancies are the main staple of teen drama, and you can tell a lot about a film from the way they're dealt with. In a straight feel-good event, such as Grease, they will vanish of their own accord; in something modern, such as One Tree Hill or Dawson's Creek, abortion won't even be on the table, there will just be a bittersweet adoption or an incredibly photogenic single parenthood. In Dirty Dancing, not only does Penny get pregnant, but she can't afford to get rid of it (who talks about the economics of reproductive health in films now?); she has to borrow cash from the heroine's father (class issues abound – if you can't tell a posh American from a regular one, just remember their doctors are incredibly well paid); she nearly dies getting a backstreet operation (again raising the politics of access to healthcare); even the unpleasant relationship that created the pregnancy feels like it's more about class than a gender point about how men are bastards. "Some people count, some people don't," says Max Cantor, whose film career was truncated by his death from a heroin overdose in 1991.

When they originally screen-tested the film, however, 39% of people didn't realise abortion was the subplot. History doesn't relate whether this is because they didn't notice it at all, or that they thought it was the main plot. That famous line about putting "Baby in the corner" ends with Swayze saying: "Somebody who taught me about the kind of person I want to be: Miss Frances Houseman", which refers us obliquely back to Baby's namesake, Frances Perkins, the first woman in the US cabinet. You'd almost have it as the Thinking Teen's teen movie, if it wasn't for all that ridiculous grinding.

Back at the auditions, I am amazed how stoic these girls are: they spend two hours cha-cha-chaing urgently in front of a huge mirror, trying to remember to look as if they're enjoying themselves without staring directly at anybody, trying to remember not to grin, trying not to give in to the humiliation of getting a high kick wrong, or just not high enough. Then they're handed back their CVs and invited breezily to leave, and they back out smiling graciously, as though leaving a tea party.

By the time they get further along, though – having been pulled out of the fray for a singing audition, and then failed that – emotions are a bit closer to the surface. All four of the Liverpool dancers (they were my favourites) got through the first round, and all four were turned down at the second. Someone told Kayleigh that she was perfect, but she looked too young. She took it on the chin, but looked distraught. "They know who they want. It's nobody's fault, it's just like interviewing for a job and not knowing one particular thing about a computer." I think the truth is that she didn't look, erm, dirty enough. But I didn't know whether or not that helped, so I didn't say it.

Other musicals that matter

Cabaret

Nobody needs a musical to tell them the Holocaust was bad, nor even that reasonable people might be bisexual. But one is so used to Weimar Germany as an impossibly distant place, and suddenly you have a VIP pass to its throbbing epicentre. And: Liza Minnelli (pictured). OK, it's still a musical. You can't watch this instead of reading Primo Levi.

Hair

There are political messages here, but they're so buried in hippie claptrap that this is a better example, not of a musical with a message, but of the power of a soundtrack. Would the Vietnam peace movement have been so popular without this album?

Rent

It seemed at the time that this was the fastest trajectory of disease-to-stage in epidemiological history, but now that I check, it was devised in 1994, by which time HIV had been known about for more than a decade. Still, if you look at La Boheme, upon which its plot is based, that was first performed in 1896. TB was identified in the 1020s. Things are definitely speeding up.

Footloose

Not such a political moment, but it has something of the Dirty Dancing about it: a plot in which the dance is almost a character in its own right. Kevin Bacon is a teen in a town where dance is banned. I know! Imagine!

After initial elation, disillusion has set in at Fox News: O'Reilly is angry that Obama, not waterboarding, is getting all the credit

The euphoria surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden is quickly fading as Fox news hosts realise that it may not be the game-changer they wished for.

Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly, a longtime advocate of harsh interrogation methods, is growing increasingly frustrated with the Obama administration's reluctance to acknowledge what he has decided was the vital role that "coerced interrogation" played in locating Osama bin Laden (view clip). Even worse, he believes this reluctance stems from the left's inability to separate ideology from truth, so he vows to "stick to the facts" to make his case for the need to use techniques like waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation measures.

Last night, on the [O'Reilly] Factor, we told you the truth that coerced interrogation – most likely, waterboarding – gave the CIA the first clue that led to Osama bin Laden's death. That is the truth. Yet, many on the left in America will not acknowledge it.

He was alluding to an argument he had the previous evening with left-leaning commentator Alan Colmes, who pointed out that even former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the courier source was not waterboarded or subjected to harsh treatment. The exact text of Rumsfeld's statement, according to Newsmax.tv, was as follows:

"The United States department of defence did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantánamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding."

But O'Reilly insisted that he was unprepared to accept any secondhand account of what the former defence secretary may or may not have said, and would question Rumsfeld himself before deciding what to believe. Before talking to Rumsfeld, O'Reilly pointed out that even CIA chief Leon Panetta has said that some valuable information may have been derived using harsh interrogation methods, but Panetta also upset the beleaguered host by adding that the question remains open as to whether or not those approaches were necessary. O'Reilly cut Panetta some slack, however, as he understands that he has to pander to his boss.

Because Mr Panetta works for President Obama, he has to say that. He has to hedge a bit. We don't know exactly how much information we might have got, could have, maybe, had we not dunked the guys in the water, the three guys. OK, I understand the game. I understand Mr Panetta's position, but again the truth is that enhanced interrogation does lead to life-saving information, despite what has been said!

To prove this "truth" that O'Reilly is already sure of, he interviewed Donald Rumsfeld and asked him to explain what he meant when he said that harsh treatment and waterboarding did not lead to beneficial information. Rumsfeld did his best to clarify his position by saying that his remarks had been taken out of context and that all he meant was that no one had been waterboarded at Guantánamo Bay, and that the three people who had been waterboarded (elsewhere presumably) were waterboarded by the CIA and not the military.

Although this response doesn't seem to shed much light on his prior statement, or offer unequivocal proof that waterboarding and so on works, it seemed to suffice for O'Reilly. Rumsfeld took a little detour, then, to make the much-debated point that waterboarding was not torture anyway, but O'Reilly, who was apparently satisfied that the truth had now been established, soon ended the segment.

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity is growing increasingly disenchanted with the Obama administration for their reluctance to release Bin Laden's death pictures and their seeming inability to get their story straight (view clip). He discusses these issues with political commentator and former marine, Colonel Oliver North.

Look, I don't know how much, I don't care … we got Bin Laden – that, to me, is important. But they did say he was hiding behind a woman. They did say he was reaching for weapons. They did say they were being fired upon. All these things now have shifted and changed and I'm having a hard time understanding.

The colonel understood Hannity's frustration but explained that there are a "lot of filters" between the people who carry out these operations and the people who end up talking about them And as someone who has actually participated in these sorts of missions, North was able to sympathise with those involved. The Navy Seals were naturally more focused on getting their man and getting out alive than making an accurate transcription of the events as they unfolded in order to satisfy the relentless demands of the 24-hour news cycle. He also made the point that in these high-pressure situations, different people see things differently, which might account for some of the subsequent confusion over details. Hannity didn't seem inclined to disagree with a Marine over this and turned to the photo dilemma instead.

We're looking at these photos that Reuters had tonight. Yes, they're gruesome. We warned children not to watch them. A lot of blood, it's gory. I know he was shot in the head, but the rationale is what bothers me the most, Colonel, and the rationale seems to be that by releasing this photo, we will incite people that already hate us – and we put a bullet in the guy's brain. I think they already hate us!

Once again, North surprised Hannity by taking the administration's part in the argument. He explained that while the administration has a penchant for political correctness, they were wise to try to avoid inflaming al-Qaida extremists by flaunting gruesome pictures of their slain leader. Also, he didn't think it wise to release anything to the public that could possibly some day be used as evidence against one of the Navy Seals in an international criminal court. Hannity took his point, but still insisted that the world needed to see those photos and that the administration had gone overboard with their hyper-sensitivity. 

When you look at the burial on a warship, where they say he's not a Muslim but he gets, you know, Islamic custom – buried within 24 hours – dumped at sea after his body is washed; he's put in a shroud; 45-minute funeral, translated into Arabic … seems overboard to me.

These politically correct gestures seemed overboard to North also, and finally the two men found some common ground.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck had exhausted his celebratory mood over the death of Bin Laden by Wednesday, probably after overdoing it earlier in the week with marching bands and cookie parties (view clip and transcript). He didn't want to hear any more about death photos or about what he termed President Obama's "victory lap" of Ground Zero. Not for the first time, Beck felt himself to be the lone voice of reason, who recognised that there are far more important things to be talking about, such as America having lost her way in the world and, by now, most of her friends.

He went through a list of countries like Germany, France, Saudi Arabia and Israel that he feels were once our friends, but have now fallen into the undecided camp, at best. Japan would probably still be our friend, but since the nuclear thing, there's really nothing left of them. Brazil looks at us like a client. Canada can probably still be counted on, particularly now that they have elected a conservative government, but they're not exactly known for their "fighting prowess". Even England, with whom we have enjoyed such a "special relationship" in the past, may be reconsidering us.

England: things have been a little strained, you know, since we sent the bust of Winston Churchill back and gave the queen an iPod of his best speeches, but they're basically toast. They're still our ally, but, I mean, anybody who watched the royal wedding of – I don't know, Kate and Leopold – they were, they were walking down and somebody on TV said that could be the next king, and I thought, "yes, if there is another king."

Worst of all, the only person who can make the public aware of our impending doom is being slowly driven off the airwaves.

Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons line up to reject proposal for primary schools floated by national curriculum panel

Children's authors are gearing up for a fight over whether schools should be given government-approved lists of books that children should have read by the time they reach a certain age.

Authors Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons appear first in line in the latest round of what has almost become a national sport in England over the last 25 years – criticising ministers for seeking to prescribe what they see as the best texts.

The idea of replicating in primary schools what already happens in the first three years of secondary schools is being floated by a small panel of experts set up by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to review the national curriculum for five to 16-year-olds, according to the Times Educational Supplement (TES).

Rosen, a former children's laureate, told the TES : "I'm all in favour of people recommending books to each other. What I'm utterly against is some centralised list which is supposed to be the government's view or the state's view.

"If Michael Gove wants to suggest his list, that's fine. But if it is the government's list or the DfE's list, I would profoundly distrust it."

He later said: "If Michael Gove says who's recommending them [the books and authors], then that's democratic, that's the way we share ideas.

"If it's just a dictation that this is the way we read books, then we don't live in a totalitarian country, we're not in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where they dictated what books you have to read."

Gibbons said: "What we need to see in schools is trust in teachers and librarians. We need a network of people who know about books and keep up to date with children's literature, who have the freedom to select books according to their pupils' backgrounds and interests."

Under the current primary curriculum children are expected to be introduced to a range of writing, including fiction, poetry, myths and plays, but there is no central list specifying books or authors.

In secondary schools, the current curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds includes a recommended list of authors and demands that pupils study Shakespeare.

In March, Gove suggested that children from the age of 11 should be reading far more than at present – up to 50 books a year . He claimed pupils were only reading one or two books, often Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, and invited children's authors to recommend their own favourites.

The current children's laureate, Anthony Browne, said then: "It's always good to hear that the importance of children's reading is recognised – but rather than setting an arbitrary number of books that children ought to read, I feel it's the quality of children's reading experiences that really matter. Pleasure, engagement and enjoyment of books is what counts – not simply meeting targets."

The prospect of state-directed reading has been a bone of contention for decades but arguments have been more heated since another bibliophile education secretary Kenneth Baker began laying the groundwork for the national curriculum in the mid-1980s.

Guardian writers have never been backward in recommending their own favourites. Last May a list for five to seven-year-olds included Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl, The Worst Witch, by Jill Murphy, and The Legend of Captain Crow's Teeth, by Eoin Colfer.

Inevitably JK Rowling's Harry Potter was recommended for 8 to 11-year-olds, as were CS Lewis's Narnia books and Jacqueline Wilson's The Story of Tracy Beaker.

The Department for Education said: "We want to create a world-class curriculum that will help teachers, parents and children know what children should learn at what age. We are currently reviewing all aspects of the national curriculum and will consult fully on the programmes of study when the review concludes."

The review is still in its early stages. Recommended programmes of study for English and other core subjects are expected to be put out for consultation early next year with decisions made by ministers in the spring. They will be sent to schools in September 2012.

U.S. prosecutors asked a judge Friday to reject a federal public defender's request to represent a retired Ohio autoworker who is on trial in Germany for alleged Nazi war crimes.

Readers' favourite photographs, songs and recipes

Snapshot: A summer's day with Mum

A wide suburban London street swings round to the right, the name of the street ending in NFIELD GARDENS NW6 just disappears off the edge of the little square-format photograph. The picture has been touched, held, looked at a thousand times over the years and the left-hand corner has been creased and then flattened out again.

This is a quiet street and it is high summer. Hedges and shrubs running along the gardens of the large brick houses have been carefully clipped. Even from this tiny black and white image, I can feel a summer day in London. The dry, warm air, the smell of concrete and lilac on a breeze; sharp shadows cast on the gables of houses; the melancholy of the afternoon.

In the very middle of the picture, a young, slender woman hunkers down, almost sitting on the backs of her open-toed high-heeled shoes. Her pencil skirt covers her knees and her bare arms emerge from a white cap-sleeved blouse. Her hair hangs in thick ringlets from a side parting and she is gazing, smiling into the face of a baby girl who stands gazing back. The woman is my mother and her left hand completely covers my tummy. My mother may have caught me as I ran from the footpath, certainly I seem to have been turned around swiftly into my mother's arms.

I am wearing a soft cotton bathing costume, ruched at the front where my mother's hand holds me tenderly and my small hand covers hers. My fat little sturdy legs end in T-bar leather sandals; again revealing the warmth of this day in 1952.

My hair hangs almost in ringlets like Mum's and is held with a ribbon at the side. I am holding something in the crook of my arm – maybe a little bag. I must be about one and a half.

There is something about the intimacy of this picture – my mother and me caught in a mutual gaze, rapt in the biscuit smell of our summer skin that makes me return to it again and again.

Since my mother's death last year, I have surrounded myself with images of her at every stage of her life, and there are many photographs taken of the two of us together.

Today, I search the fine black printed names and etched lines of an old A-Z of London; the streets and avenues and gardens of west Hampstead, south Hampstead ... like branches of a tree, arteries of the heart, determined to find exactly where my mother and I shared that moment all those years ago. At last I find it, my eyes straining from the intricate journey along Fairhazel, Greencroft, Woodchurch ... to the corner of Canfield Gardens and Priory Road.

There is a comforting satisfaction in searching a map and finding the place where we stood. Marie McCullough

Playlist: Dad's dreams of another world

You Are My Heart's Delight sung by Richard Tauber

"You are my heart's delight / And where you are, I long to be"

Dein ist mein Ganzes Herz was my dad's favourite. The warbly first line has the power to catapult me to another world, to dark Saturday winter teatimes, our kitchen, dull yellow light, football scores droning from the front room and my dad singing this as he made his signature – his only – dish: cowboy's breakfast. He'd put on the scratchy shellac record and sing as the bacon burned.

The yellowed sleeve shows Dad's musical hero: an over-stuffed Teutonic teddy. Richard Tauber, the Austrian tenor, had a pronounced squint in his right eye, which he disguised by wearing a monocle – accompanied by a top hat, it had a singular effect. To me he looked like a fat bank manager in amateur dramatics. But for Dad – and I guess many from his background in grey interwar London – he must have seemed the epitome of Mitteleuropean elegance. The operettas that made his name – Blossom Time, The Land of Smiles – were as sugary as Sachertorte, deliberately distanced from the political and financial turmoil of the time.

My dad's early life was some distance from The Land of Smiles. His own dad was a fading boxer, losing his fights and his wits; Nana sold flowers at the old Covent Garden market. Every week they spent precisely all their wages on a boozy party that lasted until the last friends left on Monday morning and the market reopened. No wonder he dreamed of another world, the one Tauber conjured up.

But Tauber had something to escape too. Born outside of marriage and part-Jewish, he was abandoned by his actor mother. At the height of his fame he was banned in Nazi Germany and fled to England. He carried on performing until, twisted with arthritis, he had to be wheeled to the stage. He died in 1948, and is buried in London.

When I started searching the internet for recordings, what struck me wasn't the critic's praise but the comments – pages and pages of them. Most of them spoke of fathers, often lost in the war. "Dad loved this", "My dad used to sing this till the fags ruined his voice", "How many men who died in the war had this song in their heads and hearts?" they wrote. I was faintly surprised. I had assumed that it was just my dad's little eccentricity.

He made a good living, my dad, but no one could describe his work in a factory as romantic, let alone fragrant. He wasn't high-brow but he loved music for what it told us about life. Now when I hear those scratchy recordings, I hear longing too: for temperamentvoll operettas, literary cafes, a creative life, another life. Tauber escaped into a world of song. How typical of Dad to aspire to that gilded world. How typical that he laughed at himself for it. Fiona Salter

We love to eat: Mum's Monday ratatouille

Ingredients

1 red pepper

1 small aubergine

2 courgettes

A handful of chestnut mushrooms

1 onion

A clove of garlic

A pinch of mixed herbs

A pinch of sugar

Salt and pepper

Fry the garlic and onions, chop the aubergine and courgettes into rough cubes and add the sliced pepper. Allow it to sweat for five minutes and then add the remaining ingredients. Finally, cook on a low heat or in a slow cooker for at least 40 minutes.

Every Monday, my mother would take my sisters and me to swimming lessons, and when we returned home the evening meal would always be a steaming pile of ratatouille with a leathery baked potato each. Initially, we hated this but grew to like it very much – it was great fun to concoct the dish with ratatouille and things in the fridge, the highlight being ratatouille with cheese and a hardboiled egg.

The reason we had ratatouille every Monday was that Mum had a new slow cooker and the only thing we knew how to make in it was ratatouille. Since then I have stopped going swimming and my sister's lessons have moved forward, so we now have time for a larger variety of meals. The slow cooker sits alone now, wedged between the wall and the bread-maker, its services only called on to make the odd beef casserole and – shudders – turkey curry. Louis Allen, 13

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• Wenger warns Wilshere could miss matches for seniors
• 'It should not be Jack Wilshere's decision,' says manager

Arsène Wenger will urge Fabio Capello to intervene in the debate over Jack Wilshere's participation in the forthcoming European Under-21 Championship, warning that if the midfielder takes part in the tournament he could miss important matches for Arsenal and the senior England team next season.

Wenger has repeatedly warned that Wilshere, 19, risks suffering burnout if he plays in next month's tournament in Denmark, but the Under-21s manager, Stuart Pearce, included the player in the 40-man provisional squad this week.

Wenger says that Wilshere is already feeling the strain of his first full season at senior level and taking part in the tournament will delay his recuperation, meaning he could miss the senior England friendly against Holland on 10 August and the European Championship qualifier in Bulgaria on 2 September. Capello has been reluctant to get involved in the debate, seemingly preferring to leave the decision to Pearce, but Wenger says the Italian would be well advised to veto the player's call-up for the Under-21s.

"I have spoken to Stuart Pearce and I think he will speak to Fabio Capello and I will too," said Wenger. "Indirectly it is his issue because he will lose a player at the start of the season, as I will. He continues to play at the moment but we know from our stats that he has hit the wall a little bit.

"Using him after such a long season can make Jack not available in August or maybe until the beginning of September. No matter what happens I will have to give him at least four weeks' holiday after the tournament – they finish at the end of June and he will not come back until the end of July and then he needs three to four weeks at least to prepare the season. That means he will not be able to play in August."

Wilshere is eager to play in the tournament but Wenger suggested the FA is being irresponsible in allowing the teenager to influence the decision. "It should not be Jack Wilshere's decision. Only the FA can master this decision and they have to react in a responsible way. You cannot ask JW does he want to play because do you really think he will say no? I don't think that's realistic. I would ask the FA to consider the consequences of a boy who is 19 and who has already played around 50 games and then has to play a tournament on the back of that."

Meanwhile, Kenny Dalglish also challenged Pearce's assertion that he needs Andy Carroll, with England set to call up the £35m striker for this summer. The Liverpool manager argues that player development rather than trophies should be the main thrust of youth football. "Winning tournaments is all very well and good but, if you don't get any players to come through, I don't think it is successful," he said.

Germany's recent success at youth level is regularly cited as one of the reason why England should field as strong a team as possible in youth tournament. However, Wenger says that citing the likes of Mesut Ozil and Thomas Muller, who were Under 21 champions with Germany before starring for the senior team in the last World Cup, is fallacious. "I hear many times a comparison with the German players but I find this completely inaccurate," he said.

"First of all the German players had not played the number of games that Wilshere has played this season when they went to the tournament. Secondly, in Germany there is a massive winter break until February that allows everybody to rest well before the World Cup. You cannot compare the two situations."

Poor performance in Greece, Romania and the US caused Deutsche Telekom to report first quarter net profits of €480 million, down 37 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Nevertheless, the company attempted to reassure jittery stock markets by confirming it is still on track to generate EBITDA of more than €19 billion in 2011.

Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann said in a statement that the company remains resolute despite the disappointing results. "We have done our homework correctly. The course has been set for the Group's realignment, and we intend to pursue this course systematically. The figures for the first quarter show, however, that there are further challenges ahead."

While the company was impacted by troubles outside its home market, overall damage was limited by cost cutting within its German fixed-line operations and over-performance from mobile data revenues. The company admitted that Germany now contributes more than half of the company's revenue and about two-thirds of earnings. It also confirmed plans to invest €10 billion to improve its network and infrastructure in Germany through 2012.

Of note, the company said marketing campaigns geared toward retaining and attracting high-value contract customers in Poland and the Netherlands had been successful, but expensive and damaging to its first quarter EBITDA. It also revealed that smartphones accounted for more than 40 per cent of all handsets sold across Europe, twice the amount of 12 months ago.

France Telecom and KPN reported similar lacklustre results.

For more:
- see this Financial Times article
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Reuters article
- see this Cellular News article

Related Articles:
Deutsche Telekom's profit dives in Q4, turnaround promised in 2012
Report: Deutsche Telekom mulls pan-European network sharing deals
Deutsche Telekom launches commercial rural LTE coverage
After AT&T deal, Deutsche Telekom to refocus on Europe

Indianapolis, Indiana

12:10 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  Good to see you.  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Thank you, everybody.  Please have a seat.  Thank you.  It is good to be back in Indianapolis. (Applause.)  Hello, Hoosiers!  Sorry about the Pacers.  (Laughter.)  I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor.  (Laughter.)  Give the Mayor a big round of applause.  He’s doing a great job.  (Applause.)

Along with the Mayor, we've got Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood in the house.  Ray -- (applause.)  We've got your own member of Congress, André Carson, here.  (Applause.)  And I want to thank Larry Dewey and everybody here at Allison for their extraordinary hospitality.

It is wonderful to be here.  I just had a chance to see the hybrid systems that you’re working on at the plant.  I love to see high-tech machinery like this.  I stand there and people explain it to me and I pretend like I know what they’re talking about.  (Laughter.)  But it looked outstanding.  (Laughter.)     
What you’re doing here at Allison Transmission is really important.  Today there are more than 3,800 buses using hybrid technology all over the world -– buses that have already saved 15 million gallons of fuel.  And pretty soon, you’ll be expanding this technology to trucks as well.  And that means we’ll have even more vehicles who are using even less oil.  That means more jobs here at Allison.  Last month, you added 50 jobs at this company and I hear that you plan to add another 200 over the next two years.  So we are very proud of that.  We are very happy about that.  (Applause.)  

This is where the American economy is rebuilding, where we are regaining our footing.  We just went through one of the worst recessions in our history, worst in our lifetimes, the worst since the Great Depression.  But this economic momentum that's taking place here at Allison is taking place all across the country.  Today we found out that we added another 268,000 private sector jobs in April.  (Applause.)  So that means over the past 14 months, just in a little bit over a year, we’ve added more than 2 million jobs in the private sector.

Now, we’ve made this progress at a time when our economy has been facing some serious headwinds -- and I don't need to tell you about that.  We've got high gas prices that have been eating away at your paychecks.  And that is a headwind that we've got to confront.  You’ve got the earthquake in Japan that has had an effect on manufacturing here.  So there are always going to be some ups and downs like these as we come out of a recession.  And there will undoubtedly be some more challenges ahead.

But the fact is that we are still making progress, and that proves how resilient the American economy is, and how resilient the American worker is, and that we can take a hit and we can keep on going forward.  That’s exactly what we're doing.  (Applause.)  

Now, despite the good work that's being done in Allison, obviously here in Indiana and all across the country there’s still some folks who are struggling.  And a lot of people are thinking, where are those new jobs going to come from, that pay well, have good benefits, can support a family?  And how do we finally reduce our dependence on oil so that we’re not hostage to high gas prices all the time?

The reason I’m here today is because the answers to these questions are right here at Allison, right here in these vehicles, right here in these transmissions.  This is where the jobs of the future are at.  We’re going to have a lot of jobs in the service sector because we’re a mature economy, but America’s economy is always going to rely on outstanding manufacturing, where we make stuff -- where we’re not just buying stuff overseas, but we’re making stuff here, and we’re selling it to somebody else.  And that's what Allison is all about.  (Applause.)

This is also where a clean energy economy is being built.  This is the kind of company that will make sure that America remains the most prosperous nation in the world.  See, other countries understand this.  We’re in a competition all around the world, and other countries -- Germany, China, South Korea -- they know that clean energy technology is what is going to help spur job creation and economic growth for years to come.

And that's why we’ve got to make sure that we win that competition.  I don't want the new breakthrough technologies and the new manufacturing taking place in China and India.  I want all those new jobs right here in Indiana, right here in the United States of America, with American workers, American know-how, American ingenuity.  (Applause.)

And that's also how we’re going to get gas prices under control.  Now, I confess, it’s been a while since I filled up.  (Laughter.)  Secret Service doesn't let me fill up my motorcade. (Laughter.)  But it hasn’t been that long ago since I watched those numbers scroll up and I know how tough it is.  If you’ve got to drive to work, and you may not be able to afford buying a new car, so you’ve got that old beater that gets you eight miles a gallon, it’s tough.  It is a huge strain on a lot of people.

But if we can transition to new technologies, that's what’s going to make a difference over the long term.  That's how we’re going to meet the goal that I’ve set of reducing the amount of oil that we import by one-third by the middle of the next decade.
We can hit that target.  We can hit that target.

Now, in the short term, we still need to do everything we can to encourage safe and responsible oil production here at home.  In fact, last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003.  So I want everybody to remember that if people ask -- because sometimes I get letters from constituencies saying, why aren’t we just drilling more here?  We’re actually producing more oil here than ever.  But the challenge is we’ve only got about 2 to 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world’s oil.  So we can’t just drill our way out of the problem.

If we’re serious about meeting our energy challenge we’re going to have to do more than drill.  And that’s why the real solution is clean, homegrown energy.  The real solution is advanced biofuels -- and there’s a lot of good biofuel work being done here in Indiana.  It means that we’ve got to have natural gas vehicles.  We’ve got a lot of natural gas that can be produced here in the United States of America.  It means making our cars and trucks more energy-efficient, because if we use less oil, that reduces demand; that brings the price down; and you will see the impact at the pump.  That’s what’s going to make a difference and that’s why what you’re doing here is so important.

Now, it turns out even though they don’t let me go to the gas pump, I do have a lot of cars under my jurisdiction, as President.  The federal fleet is enormous, and we’ve already doubled the number of hybrids in the federal fleet.  And I’m directing every agency to make sure that 100 percent of our cars and trucks are fuel-efficient or clean-energy vehicles by 2015.  So you’re going to have a customer, hopefully in the United States government, because we want to make sure -- (applause) -- that we are making clean fuel-efficient cars and trucks.  (Applause.)   

We’ve also launched private sector partnerships with companies like FedEx, UPS, utility companies.  A lot of these companies that have trucks and delivery trucks that are used in urban areas with a lot of stops and starts are perfect for the technology that you’re building.  So we’re forming partnerships to make sure that you’ve got more customers.

And to spur the production of fuel-efficient cars and trucks across the country, we’ve reached an historic agreement with every major auto company.  Thanks to the leadership of Ray LaHood, they’re ramping up the fuel economy of their cars and trucks.  And that will not only save 1.8 billion barrels of oil, it’s going to save you, the average driver, about $3,000 at the pump as cars increasingly get better gas mileage.

And this July, we’re finalizing new fuel-efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks for the first time in our history.  And that could actually end up saving us -- we were talking about this the other day -- it could end up saving us something like 500 billion barrels of oil, huge amounts of oil, because heavy trucks use so much.

We’re also promoting clean energy technologies in other ways, from investing in hybrid systems like the one Allison is developing for commercial trucks, to championing vehicles that run on clean-burning natural gas, to spurring the creation of next-generation batteries for electric vehicles.

You know, a few years ago, America only produced 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries.  Those are the batteries that are going into these new electric cars.  Because of the investments that we made in the first two years that I was in office, we’re on track to produce 40 percent of the advanced batteries.  That is going to be a huge boon to American manufacturing.  (Applause.)  That’s an example of a big new industry that we can create right here in the United States of America.   

And to make sure we’re not only investing in clean energy technologies but encouraging people to use these new technologies, I’ve proposed a $7,500 tax rebate for electric vehicles.  So if you do have that old beater that you need to get rid of, and you decide that you’re going to buy a new car, choosing an electric car you can actually get a huge rebate that will save you money at the gas pump, but is also going to save money on your tax returns.  And that will make a big difference.
We should reward also communities that are making it easier for folks to use electric vehicles and leading the way when it comes to clean energy.  And that’s the kind of leadership that Indianapolis is showing.  You’re installing natural gas pumps around town and you’re taking other steps to promote clean energy.  And I hope cities and towns across this country follow in your example.

Of course, these investments in clean energy do cost some money, and we’re going to need to find a way to pay for them.  Part of the cost can be made up by putting an end to the unwarranted subsidies that we are giving oil companies right now through the tax code.  (Applause.)  I want everybody to listen here.  Oil companies over the last five years, through a recession, through ups and downs, the top five oil companies, their profits have ranged between $75 billion and $125 billion.  That's with a B -- not million; billion.  And yet, they still have a tax loophole that is costing taxpayers $4 billion every year.  Now, if you're already paying them at the pump, we don't need to pay them through the tax code.  We do not need to do it. (Applause.)  Especially at a time when we’re scouring every part of the budget to try to figure out how we bring down our deficit and our debt.

Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that even if we end these taxpayer subsidies, we’re still going to have more work to do in getting control of our deficit and debt.  And I know that in this difficult fiscal climate, it may be tempting for some people to say let’s stop investing in hybrid technology; let’s stop investing in basic research; let’s stop investing in the infrastructure that's needed to make sure that we can transition to new forms of transportation.  That's the temptation.  But I profoundly disagree with that approach.

If we’re going to win the future, we’ve got to cut out the things we don't need, but still make investments in the things that we do.  That's what you do at home.  If somebody in your family loses a job, if your hours get cut, what do you do?  You may stop going out to a restaurant to eat.  You may decide we’re going to put off buying that new furniture or taking that vacation.  But you’re not going to stop fixing the boiler or the hole in the roof.  You’re not going to stop making sure that you got enough money to help your kids go to school.  Those are the things -- that's like your seed corn.  You don't eat that.

The same is true for the federal government.  We can’t cut investments in clean energy that are going to help us out-innovate and out-compete and help America win the future.  We’re not going to stop making investments that allow plants like this one to find the new ways of doing business in the future.

I want to make sure the federal government is right here with you as a partner with you as you move forward, and we can do it and still get control of our debt and our deficit if we do it smart.

For nearly 100 years this company has made its way forward through ups and through downs, making advances that have transformed everything from buses to planes to tanks.  Jim Allison actually helped start the Indy 500 back in 1909 -- not just to race cars, but to test new racecar components.  And that same spirit of innovation and ingenuity is what I’ve seen in the workers that I talked to today.

And that's why I’m so confident in this country.  That's why I’m so optimistic about our economic future -- because I believe in all of you.  I believe in the American worker, and I believe in American business.  For all the challenges we face, this country is still home to the most entrepreneurial, most industrious, most determined people on the planet.  There is nothing we cannot do so long as we put our mind to it, so long as we keep our eyes on the prize.  (Applause.)

And I’m going to keep on working with you to make sure we do that so long as I have the privilege of being President of the United States.

Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
12:28 P.M. EDT

3:15 P.M. EDT

DR. BIDEN:  Thank you, Patty, for that warm introduction and for all you do for military families, and especially the children.  I always love seeing you, and I’m so delighted to see you here today.  Thank you.

Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE:  Good afternoon.

DR. BIDEN:  It’s so nice to see so many friends here.  I’m Jill Biden, and I’m a proud military mom and grandmom.  And it’s a special honor to welcome you all to the White House today.

This has been quite a week, hasn’t it?  (Laughter.)  Yesterday I joined my husband at the Pentagon to commemorate the victims of the attacks on 9/11.  None of us will ever forget that day.  But the heroic actions in Pakistan earlier this week reminded all Americans of the extraordinary courage that our military service members and their families demonstrate on a daily basis.

On Sunday night, as I was -- after the President made his announcement, I was -- it was late, and I was outside waiting for my husband.  I had on my bathrobe, and I was sitting on the steps of our residence, and I could hear in the distance -- because there were so many people that were outside -- and I could hear them at the gates that opened to our driveway, and there were people there singing, “God Bless America.”  And it really just renewed what we all know -- just really -- it just brought this country together.  And I think it was such a great feeling.

We and the entire nation are so proud of all of you.
Michelle and I are thrilled to have you here at the White House today as we express the thanks of our entire nation for those who serve.  You are all heroes -- from the moms who keep their families together while your loved ones are serving overseas, to the grandparents who step in with much needed support, to the siblings and children who are strong and brave while mom or dad is away.

Just last month I attended a deployment ceremony where I met some folks I now call, “The Grandparents.”  Both parents of three children under the age of 10 were deploying, and these grandmothers decided to circle the wagons and take care of those children.  What a relief it is for those parents to know that their children are being taken care of by their grandparents, and what a gift to the children to be surrounded by love while both of their parents are deployed.

Last summer, I traveled to Iraq with my husband, Joe, to visit our troops during the Fourth of July.  I had lunch with several female soldiers, many of whom were mothers.  These women were managing all the challenges of parenting  -- arranging health care, childcare, and education -- thousands and thousands of miles away from their homes and loved ones.

One woman across the table fought back tears as she told me that she was missing out on taking her youngest daughter to college.  I was at a loss for words.  All I could do at that moment was just reach across that table and grab her hand.

Michelle and I have both been struck by these women fiercely proud to serve their country and never complaining, but still struggling with some of the everyday challenges we all face in managing a home and a family.

You here today, and all the women we have met in our travels, are doing your part.  The government is working hard to do its part.  And each American also has the ability to make a difference in the life of a military family.  That’s what our Joining Forces initiative is all about.

And now, it’s my honor and privilege to introduce a woman who is doing her part as a strong leader and a constant advocate for our service members, veterans, and military families.  I have had the privilege of traveling with our First Lady to meet military families across this country, and I’ve seen firsthand how committed she is to doing everything she can to support them.  I feel so fortunate to have her as a partner in this effort and to have her as my dear friend -- our First Lady, Michelle Obama.  (Applause.)

MRS. OBAMA:  Thank you, everyone.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you all so much.  Please rest, enjoy the tea.  Welcome to the White House.  Isn’t this great?  It’s fabulous.  (Applause.)  And everyone looks amazing.  (Laughter.)  It’s like a room full of bursting flowers.  And we have our little ladies -- you guys have your pinkies up, everyone’s pinkies up?  (Laughter.)  Or something like that.  (Laughter.)

We're delighted to have you here.  Let me start by recognizing my partner in so much -- and I didn’t know that this woman would be not just a partner but a friend, a Blue Star mom herself who has been sending out the call, educating this country long before she stepped into this role, focusing the nation on the sacrifices of the families -- Dr. Jill Biden.  Let’s give her a round of applause.  (Applause.)

And Patty.  Patty has been a tremendous advisor to Jill and I throughout this entire process, and she is amazing and knowledgeable, and she is going to be a critical component of Joining Forces.  And we are so proud of her and her service.  Let’s give Patty a hand.  (Applause.)

And finally, I want to thank all of you.  Thank you.

I know it’s pretty exciting to be having tea at the White House in the East Room.  But believe it or not, we are just as excited, and probably more excited, to have you all here.  I mean, it is really -- we love you all.  We really, really do.  And that’s because over the last two years, as Jill said, we have been inspired by all of you in so many ways.  Spending time with our men and women in uniform and their families has been the highlight of our work in these roles.

We’ve been moved by your strength and your spirit, by your courage and, more importantly, by your sacrifice.  And as you have opened your arms and your hearts to me -- which you have so fully, and I feel it and I know it.  I'm not a Blue Star mom or a Gold Star mom, but you all have scooped me up in ways that I wouldn’t have imagined.

You’ve also opened my eyes to what being part of a military family is truly all about.  You’ve shown me what it takes for one parent to do the job of two -- juggling the carpools and the soccer practices on top of many of you handling the work of a full-time job and all the rest that goes into running a household; caring for a loved one who’s been injured, or mourning a spouse or a child who never made it home.

And I know that there are people in the room today who feel a little sad because this Mother’s Day is a little less than what you’d hope.  And all we can do is hug you and tell you that we are thinking and praying and working for you all, and we are proud of you.  And some of you are, as Jill said, grandparents caring for a grandchild.  And others of you have served in uniform yourselves.

You’ve shown us what it takes to be a military child, many of you -- changing and leaving friends behind every few years; trying to keep up with homework and activities; and trying to lead the life of a normal kid while worrying about a parent or a sibling who is in harm’s way.  And as Jill reminded us just this past week, as Americans everywhere stood in awe at the bravery of the soldiers who carried out that daring operating in Pakistan, it was also a moment for all of us to remember that everyone who serves is able to do so because of the love and support of their families.

And what you do is not easy.  I won’t even say it’s not always easy.  I don’t think it’s ever easy.  I know that every day you deal with things that most of us can only imagine.  But I also know that along with incredible challenges come incredible strength.  That's something else that I know from you all.

Roseanna Yamashita and her daughter Tyler are some of you who know what I’m talking about.  With a father serving in the army, Tyler is only a junior in high school, but she’s already attended 10 schools on three continents.  And next year, the Yamashitas are moving to Germany.  But Tyler and Roseanna never complain -- as none of you do.  They know it’s part of serving their country.

And then there’s Helen Norberg and her daughter Julia.  They know a thing or two about what I’m talking about.  When Julia had to deploy to Iraq, Helen was there every day to help take care of their three-year-old grandson Isaiah.  She enrolled him in gymnastics, probably just to settle him down.  (Laughter.)  She took him to his first dentist appointment.  And since the only time Julia and Isaiah could speak was during the day, Helen would often leave work, drive to Isaiah’s school with her cell phone, just so he could hear his mom’s voice.

And then, last year as Julia’s deployment was coming to an end, Helen’s house was destroyed by a tornado.  Helen jumped on top of Isaiah to protect him.  She broke two vertebrae in her back.  When the storm died down, Isaiah had nothing but a small scratch on his arm.  And as Julia said, she has been the best grandmother and mother any soldier could ask for.  (Applause.)

And there are stories like this at every table, in every one of your households, in every one of your lives.  I know that.  These are only examples of what you live every day.  So make no mistake about it, even if you’re not the ones wearing the uniform, every single one of you is serving our country.  And every single one of you deserves our support -- not just with words, but with deeds.  Now, words are good.  They help.  Deeds are better.  (Laughter.) Real concrete actions that make a difference for you at your workplaces, in your schools, and in your communities.

And that’s why last month, Jill and I -- with Patty’s help and so many others -- we started Joining Forces, a nationwide campaign to rally this country to recognize, honor, and support our military families.  We’re joining forces across this country, and we’re calling on all Americans to ask themselves just one simple question:  How can I give back to these families who have given me so much?

We’re joining forces across the federal government, building on over 50 commitments that departments and agencies have made for how they can better serve military families.  We’re going to be joining forces with cities and states, encouraging them to adopt policies that will help you all.

We’re joining forces with organizations like the national PTA and the Military Child Education Coalition, to improve school outreach to military kids.  We’re joining forces with businesses and nonprofits, getting commitments from companies like Walmart and Sears to help military spouses find and keep jobs.

And we’re joining forces with families and communities.  We’re urging people to do whatever they can as neighbors, colleagues, and classmates to lend a hand to military families.

We believe that this is what you deserve from us, because showing our gratitude to those who serve our nation whether it’s on the battlefield or at home, is something that every single American can do.  And it’s something that every single American should do.

So, to everyone here, I just want to say thank you.  This is a very small way to say thank you.  Thank you for your strength, your commitment.  Thank you for setting an example for the rest of us.  It has been such a pleasure getting to meet all of you.

So let’s stop crying -- because I’m about to cry again.  (Laughter.)  Let’s just stop now.  (Laughter.)  And remember, it is Mother’s Day.  So today is a non-“Let’s Move!” day.  (Laughter.)  Eat all the cookies you want.  (Applause.)  And enjoy this weekend.  Continue to take care of each other.  We love you.  We are proud of you.  And we will keep working.

So thank you all.  Take care.  (Applause.)

END
3:30 P.M. EDT

PitCam.tv conducted an interview with vocalist Vincent Bennett of Massachusetts metallers THE ACACIA STRAIN on April 19, 2011 in Berlin, Germany.

After appearing at the upcoming Winestock festival in Germany on July 16th, Seven Thorns will be supporting Circle II Circle in July and August. The band's upcoming shows are as follows: July 16 Winestock Festival/Germany July 21 Siegburg/Germany @ Kubana July 24 Uden/Netherlands @ De Pul July 28 Osnabruck/Germany @ Ballroom Aug. 02 Hamburg/... Read More/Discuss on Metal Underground.com

(Alpine, CA) - Alpine Beer Company updated us with a ton of beer release info in their newsletter today.  Here's the skinny, straight from the newsletter.

"Since there were no fatalities reported after our last announcement it appears safe to divulge some more tasty morsels of news. The release of a couple of beers and the return of another popular beer appears on the horizon. What goes with a Gose beer? My aunt, Crazy Hazel, will be back in town soon.

 

Okay, I had a bubba job to help with in Baja Mexico last week and missed telling you about “O’Brien’s IPA” coming out last Friday. My apologies but now that you know, come on down and fill your growlers with this most delicious, Gold Medal winning, light IPA. Pints and pitchers are for sale at the pub, too.

Today, Friday May 6^th, is the official re-release date of “Ugly” our Black IPA. The mild roasty, cocoa flavor, silky, creamy texture and big hop smackdown combine to stage a flavor choirs on your palate. At 7.5% abv and the newest recognized beer style out, we think we know a thing or two about making really good “hoppy” beers, and this is no exception. Enjoy.

Bottles of "Emerson" go on sale at the brewery today. 22 ounce amber beer bottles of this New Zealand hopped Imperial Pilsner for $4.79 plus the usual. This is a beer you collectors and hoarders can lay down in your cellar without fear. But why?

Going the extra mile, for you, our loyal, loving customers, we’re adding an extra brew session this Sunday with the goal of making “Red Card” a special Red Ale made specifically for major soccer events. Gold Cup Soccer starts June 5^th, look for the release then. We’ll have it for growlers, pints and pitchers for as long as it lasts. And, soccer-centric pubs will have some for their televised dates.

The creativity doesn’t stop around here. We’ll be squeezing in a new beer as soon as we have some tank space. It’s a beer style called “Gose.” It has its origins in Germany and is a wheat beer originally wild fermented. We’ll control the microbes that ferment our batch, but the uniqueness of the beer is the use of coriander and salt. Yes, the beer has a decided salty flavor which when done right is very tasty.

And, how about another Pale Ale. We have some hops we want to combine in a lighter, 5-6% abv range, pale ale that we know will make a great flavor/aroma blend. Again, as tank space permits. For those that have been around for a while may remember “Crazy Hazel” amber ale flavored with the generous use of filberts. That will be our next specialty after the afore mentioned beers.

In an effort to minimize issues that arise, here are some things that may help with what we can and can’t do around here. Because of our diminutive size (we’re tiny) there is no office space here. I can’t sit at the computer at the brewery so I write newsletter and answer emails at home. When you ask what kegs are available, or what’s up for growler fills, I don’t know, I’m not there. I’d have to be there in order to answer accurately because our available beers change hourly. Calling the brewery is the only way to get those answers.619-445-2337 x1

We open the Pub at Noon on Sundays, the website needs updating."

 

Image: http://monza-club.de/typo3temp/pics/81cbe51cc2.jpg more infos are not available at the moment sorry! :friends:

Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor for BNA Germany (May 2011) is a post from: Bollywood Buzz Related posts:Photo Shoots: Aishwarya Rai for TV Media Germany (April 2011) Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor for FHM Magazine (March 2011) Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor for Elle magazine Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor for Marie Claire India Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor For [...]

Photo Shoots: Sonam Kapoor for BNA Germany (May 2011) is a post from: Bollywood Buzz

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Even though the official presentation of the new M Class isn’t due until later this year - most likely at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show in early September, an increasing number of lightly camouflaged prototypes have been caught roaming around the roads of Germany.

During the past few months, we’ve covered the 2012 M Class pretty extensively with both professional and reader shots. This new photo of a pair of M Class SUVs sitting side by side at a parking lot with other Mercedes models comes courtesy of Carscoop reader Patrick Favoreel.

Read more »

Sophos on Friday announced plans to acquire private network security firm Astaro for an undisclosed sum. Astaro, founded in 2000 and headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany and Wilmington, Mass., is the world's fourth largest provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, Sophos said in a news release. Such technology offers multiple security functions, including network, web, mail and web application protection, through a single platform. Astaro's portfolio will bolster Sophos' existing endpoint, mobile, email, web and data protection capabilities, the company said.

For those of you rejoicing in bloodlust over Osama bin Laden's death, a piece of advice: Don't go to Germany! They have this bizarre cultural thing about dancing on peoples' graves with blood pouring out of your mouth. And it's entrenched enough that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement about being "glad" to hear about bin Laden's death has become a major national scandal, even landing her a criminal complaint from a Hamburg judge today. More »

Judy Bloom books, Playboy magazines, Spice channel, the Internet - the availability of sex-Ed resources has significantly multiplied over the past 100+ years. Before the sexual revolution, past generations lived in ignorant misery. Broadway in Chicago presents the 8-time Tony Award winning Spring Awakening a new musical in town for a one week engagement. Based on the controversial play produced by Frank Wedekind, teenagers come of age in 19th century Germany. Wendall wonders about procreation. Moritz worries about wet dreams. Melchoir questions the punitive educational system within an oppressed society. Along with the other village kids, lustful thoughts arouse more questions without answers. Fornication and masturbation without education is groping in the dark for satisfaction. When the boys and girls venture into the unknown, it takes a village to crush the buds of change. Spring Awakening is a beautiful lust story!

[JURIST] The Supreme Federal Court of Brazil [official website, in Portugese] unanimously recognized legal rights [press release, in Portugese] for partners in same-sex civil unions [JURIST news archive] on Thursday. Through the ruling, gay couples in "stable relationships" now have rights to community property, alimony, health insurance and tax benefits, adoption, and inheritance rights. The court disregarded a portion of the civil code, instead deferring to Article 3, Clause IV of the Federal Constitution [full text, in Portugese], which provides that the state should "promote the good of everyone, without distinction of origin, race, sex, color, age and other forms of discrimination." The court upheld the distinction between civil unions and marriage. Lawmaker Jean Wyllys [official website, in Portugese] plans to introduce a constitutional amendment to legalize same-sex marriage [Correio Braziliense report, in Portugese] as soon as he obtains the necessary number of signatures. Brazil becomes the largest country to legalize unions for same-sex couples, and the third South American nation, after Uruguay and Argentina [JURIST report]. Foreign and domestic courts and legislators are increasingly addressing the issue of gay marriage. Last month, Hungary added a prohibition against gay marriage [JURIST report] to its Constitution. France upheld a same-sex marriage ban [JURIST report] in January. In the US, judges in Wisconsin, California and Texas [JURIST reports] confronted the issue last year. Governments in Mexico, Kenya, Portugal and Germany [JURIST reports] are also addressing the issue.

Indoor and outdoor lamp The lamp was created for the Next Home Collection (Germany), goes onsale in early 2012. Awarded Design and Design International (Paris) 2010 Excellentand cheerful decoration of interiors and exteriors. Lamp without a doubt will frighten all darkness around. For fans of the risks and thrills New works and events www.mukomelov.com Design [...]

lftp-gtk beta
(GTK FTP Tool)
A gtk gui for lftp

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Foobnix Simple and Powerful music player 2.5.14
(GTK Sound Application)
Foobnix is very powerfull music player with CUE, last.fm, 3000+ radios, tabs, free online music playing, hotkeys, tray icons, equalizer, tag editor, easy navigation, user friendly.

changelog:
2.5.14
* Record of radio in file
* Full supporting of Ubuntu Natty
* Cover & Lyric panel (optional)
* Popup with virtual timestamp when mouse pointer over playback bar
* Supporting of .m4v format
* Show video files's duration
* Possibility to create folders in music library panel
* Search song via VK API
* Configure amount of downloading threads
* Download to for any files
* Columns for music library panel
* Possibility to change columns mode (on click)
* Composer column was added
* Moving and copy (with Ctrl) of files by drag and drop in music library panel
* Fix banned VK users
* Fix bug with playing of ape+cue
* Fix tag editor's bug (create tags in tagless files)
* Fix bug with enabling/disabling equalizer
* Fix bug (impossible to edit list of extensions)
* Optimization of interaction with PCManFM and Thunar file managers
* Add Krusader in file manager list

2.5.11
* Fixed show title and artist for radios, added manually
* Fixed lastfm integration list for non English locale
* Fixed translation error with \r symbol
* Process search by vk audio url with '#' http://vk.com/audio?id=-xxxxx#/idxxxxxx
* Add controls to fullscreen mode: Volume Control, Exit Full Screen.

2.5.10
* Audio Converter
* Configurable columns in playlist
* Opportunity to choose the method of numbering (right click on №-header)
* Controls for full screen video.
* VK integration: Show Friends list and friends music
* VK integration: Search by user id and by group id

0.2.5
* Simple Tag Editor, support of batch processing file tags
* Rename and delete files and directories from music library
* Open folders in file manager from music library
* Popup notification
* Last.fm integration (Love this tracks, My top artists, My top tracks, My loved tracks)
* New style buttons for Shuffle and Ordering
* Automatic download online music
* Open content in file manager
* Info panel - Artist Biography with images.
* Volume control active "+", "-"
* Online music search module optimization
* File cache for online info (covers, album titles, lyrics)
* Copy data in fit format for trackers
* Display technical file info and player state in status panel
* More compact search panel
* Improve performance player (more quick start, exit and more other)
* Drag and drop optimization
* A lot of bug fixes



0.2.3-2
* Belorussian translation Алексей Середа
* Translated to it and es Bersil
* Make search line without Frame, search help text inside.
* Implement Shuffle and Repeat buttons.
* Remove from dependency setuptools

0.2.3
* Added Multi tab navigation tree
* Saving navigation and playlist tabs on exit
* New style menu with one button
* Image themes support
* Context menu for tabs
* Possibility to rename tabs, playlist tab managment (mouse wheel, remove, create)
* Possibility to set gap between tracks possibility
* Performance optimization
* Opacity configuration
* Other fixes

0.2.2-10
* Fixes playback controls style for all themes
* Fixed crashes on Debian and maybe on other system when online search
* Append by right click button
* Add support of ISO.wv
* Configure logging system
* Starting time optimization 1 sec on my machine.
* EQ more user friendly, restart not required
* Widget button to add music to the lybrary at first start
* HD quality video search and playing
* Sumbenu in same style as menu
* Add Edit radio Url and path
* Add new release appeared popup
* Fixed trash displaying in navigation tree
* Fixed menu style in the same color as panels
* Chinese translation Dean Lee
0.2.2-9
* Add new "karmic" "lucid" PPA
* Fix to works with debian
* Add Russian Localization
* Add man help with all commands descriptions (example: man foobnix)
* Add command line "foobnix --now-playing" display current track
* Add Keys on Video: F or Alt+Enter - Full Screen, P - Pause, Up,Down - volue, Left,Right - seek

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